Chick Movies

Many times, when things go south in the life of the American woman, she turns to the “chick movie” for comfort. The viewing of the chick movie is generally accompanied by junk food and pajamas or sweats and a magnum of wine, depending on the occasion. The object of this ritual is to purge the viewer of a recent hurt by basking in the sisterhood of similarly wronged women who play out their initial failures and ultimate triumphs on the big screen. I, too, am a proponent of the healing power of movies, but frankly, the “chick movie” genre makes me want to hurl.

Recently, after a particularly unpleasant (read: man induced) period of my life I found myself in desperate need of some shoring up. As usual, I turned to my friends who have always helped me negotiate the darkness. Feeling particularly vulnerable, I fell prey to my niece’s suggestion that a “chick movie” was what I required. She prescribed a viewing of “Under the Tuscan Sun” saying it was “exactly what you need right now.” I was skeptical. I protested but she would have none of it. Pointing out both that it was airing on one of the chick TV cable channels that very evening and that it was in all likelihood not going to kill me to indulge her and promising that Diane Lane would not be boinking Richard Gere in a beach house at any time during the movie, I agreed to her suggestion.

It was like two hours of every cliché chicks tell themselves to make themselves feel better all rolled into one movie. Diane Lane blindsided by a bitter divorce is offered a ticket for a gay tour of Tuscany by her best friend Sandra Oh and her lesbian lover when they discover that Sandra is finally pregnant after several tries, they then turn in their tickets for an upgrade in the depressed, divorced, Diane’s name. After at first refusing, Diane ultimately takes the trip. Shortly after her arrival, she ditches the gay tour to purchase a villa in Tuscany on a whim. She’s lonely and miserable until she beds a young, hot Italian man. About to leave for a weekend trip with him, she discovers Sandra outside her house pregnant and alone, for her lover has ultimately decided that motherhood was not her calling and ditched her. Meantime, Diane oversees the love affair of the young worker repairing her villa and the construction foreman’s daughter cause she knows true love when she sees it, resulting in their wedding at the end of the film. Having her wishes of a family and a wedding in her new home one day now realized, she learns the valuable chick movie lesson that you DO get what you wish for, just not always in the way you imagined. Her lesson now learned cues the handsome American that wanders onto her property and with whom she finds the love she’s been looking for, or rather, it finds her.

If I could have punched this movie, I think I would have. It was like a laundry list of chick fantasies: I went on vacation and never came home! I got dumped and now my pregnant best friend did too which makes me not so bad, cause I may have gotten dumped, but she’s dumped AND pregnant! I bought a house and radically changed my life and I’m scared and lonely but now my best friend (who is pregnant and dumped) just moved in with me! On another continent no less! If you wish hard enough it will come true but you must be wildly specific!

My idea of a chick movie is a bit different. “The Great Escape” is my idea of a chick movie. Hot guys? Check. Overcoming adversity? Check. Goal achieved? Check. Sure most of them get killed at the end, but that’s how life really works. Sometimes you just get screwed for no reason.

Life Lessons in the Strangest Places

I recently watched an episode of the TV show “Mystery Diagnosis” that I found truly extraordinary. For those of you that have never seen the show, it’s a sort of detective show for disease. They feature one or two hapless individuals per episode that have symptoms that cannot be readily diagnosed and chronicle the patient’s journey to find answers.

What struck me about this particular episode was not so much the peculiarity of the subject’s symptoms, though they were plenty unpleasant, but the story of how her life progressed during this tumultuous period. Our subject was a single woman in her late 30’s or early 40’s who, until recently, had been in perfect health. She began to experience increasingly uncontrollable episodes of explosive diarrhea to the point where she was a virtual shut-in in her home. In an attempt to regain some normalcy and freedom in her life she had resorted to wearing adult diapers.

Now, despite the fact that her time was divided between working as best she could, attending numerous doctor visits in an attempt to find an answer to her medical woes or pooping uncontrollably she managed to find and begin dating a man. Since she was fairly smitten with him, she made the decision to hide her problem from him and was able to do so mainly because she had developed a survival tactic; that of knowing where every possible accessible public restroom was located wherever she might be. Things began to get serious between them and he invited her on a trip to Paris for the weekend. She was over the moon; however, she was also reticent. How would she hide her problem from him in such close quarters? She put her reservations aside and went on the trip.

For the first day or so she was able to employ her survival tactic with much success, however that evening as they were out enjoying the romantic evening in Paris her love had planned for them things went awry. Part of the evening was a romantic walk along the Seine. She slowly began to panic as she hadn’t had the opportunity to scout the area for accessible restrooms though not wanting to tip her hand, she followed along with him. They walked along until a short time later she felt the familiar rumbling in her lower gut and before she knew it had soiled herself right in front of him and any passersby as she stood helpless in her beautiful dress. She was mortified.

She revealed to him the secret she had been hiding from him all this time and he very sweetly helped her get cleaned up enough to get back to the hotel where he did his best to make her feel at ease despite the awkwardness of the situation. Not long after arriving back home in the states following this nightmarish journey, he proposed to her and she accepted.

Now, as an almost 42 year old single woman, I get a lot of advice from people on what it is that they think I’m doing wrong in my personal quest for love. Some of these theories include that I don’t socialize enough, that perhaps I have my attention devoted elsewhere and am just not “open enough” to the possibility, and that I just don’t “put myself out there”. To them I offer the story of explosive diarrhea woman. Here is a woman who love found despite the embarrassing secret that kept her shut in. While I may not be out every night trawling the city for a man, I certainly lead an active enough life that love can find me when it’s ready to. And while I mercifully don’t struggle with an explosive diarrhea problem, I hope I’m lucky enough that when love does find me, it’s a man that would marry me even if I did.

Death Can F You Up - Part IV

I was a very unhappy girl. My world was crumbling around me. I had lost my parents, now I was about to lose my home and friends and all I had ever known. We were sent off to spend a week at the beach in Maryland then headed up to spend some time in the country at my cousin’s farm before moving to our respective new homes. I dreaded the end of our trip, but time has a way of moving forward whether you want it to or not and before long it was time to face the future. I remember the first day in my new home feeling uncomfortable and despondent. I wanted to be anywhere but there. The house we moved to was next door to my oldest sister’s high school friend who had five kids, among them two daughters who were around my age. They came over to welcome me to the neighborhood and encourage me to go out and explore but I wanted no part of it. Eventually, I acquiesced and over time grew to like my new kid ridden neighborhood, though I would soon have another hurdle to cross; being the new kid at my new school.

The first day of fourth grade had arrived and I was feeling sick with worry. I had never been the new kid before and it was not a role that I relished. I was very shy and didn’t make friends easily. I remember begging my sister not to leave me there as I lined up with my new class in the playground. I was eyed with curiosity by the other kids. It was a small school and fresh meat seemed to stick out like a sore thumb. At least my teacher seemed nice and I was able to make it through the school day without crying. The first six months or so of school was unbearable. As the new kid, I was mocked at every turn. It didn’t help that my assigned seat was next to the requisite “cootie” kid and I was teased that there was a love affair going on between us. Eventually, I made some friends and the teasing tapered off. By the start of fifth grade, I had regained my place at the top of the heap.

I had a hard time living at with my sister’s family, but then I would have had a hard time living anywhere that wasn’t my childhood home. I had decided almost the second I was told of my father’s death that I would take care of myself in the manner in which my parents would have wanted and I would not deviate from that plan. Over time I became accustomed to living there, but it would never feel like my real home because it wasn’t. This was no fault of hers. She did her best to make me a part of her nuclear family, but I did not want to be. I already had a family and I refused to betray them by becoming part of another. I had the added stress of going from being the youngest to the oldest and was expected to set an example for her young children, a role to which I was ill-suited. I resigned myself to my new fate and counted the days until I turned eighteen. In the meantime, I looked to my friend’s parents to fill the void my own parents had left which they filled with aplomb.

I ran away from home several times during my teen years desperately trying to call attention to how unhappy I was living there, but they were cries that fell on deaf ears. There was simply nowhere else for me to go. Fights with my sister and her family grew more intense and more disruptive to her family unit. When I was seventeen I ran away for what would be the last time. I was asked not to return to my sister’s house. After living with a friend’s family for a couple of months I was invited to live with my sister who is ten years older and her husband who had just purchased their first home in New Jersey. I finished my senior year of high school while commuting to New York from New Jersey and spent every weekend that I could crashing on friend’s couches desperate to continue the friendships I had worked so hard to cultivate. It was the single best living experience since my parents passed away. This sister took a different tack. She seemed to trust my decision making and largely left me to make my own decisions, gently encouraging me to see different sides when she disagreed with my proposed plan of action. I felt like I had a real say in my destiny for the first time and it helped to rebuild my confidence.

The deaths of my parents left an indelible mark on my psyche. I have struggled with its impact since it happened and still do to this day, thirty some odd years later. It has transformed a hopeful little girl into a cynical woman who has difficulty viewing change as a positive force. It has damaged my will to be happy as I now have a fear that any happiness I achieve will be swept away by events out of my control, much in the same way that happy little girl’s world was so rocked by the loss of the people that loved her the most. It has caused me to see God as a force of menace instead of comfort. But it has also given me a strength that I never would have discovered if I had been allowed to live the life I had lead up until that defining moment. I don’t know who I would be if my life had stayed status quo, but I think given the opportunity to meet her, I would still like me better the way I am now.

Death Can F You Up - Part III

My world had been turned upside down yet it was still somehow the same. I still lived in the same house with the same brother and sisters and went to the same school everyday but my mom wasn’t there when I got home from school and I didn’t have my dad’s arms to jump into when he got home from work anymore. I felt hollow and nauseated. I felt like a zombie. Of course I couldn’t have told you how I felt back then. I didn’t have the capacity to describe those new emotions yet. I went on about the business of being almost nine years old and finished out the school year. I bade goodbye to my wonderful teacher and began my summer ritual of long days at the swim club.

My oldest sister who was 29 years old at the time had moved back into the house with her husband and young son to take care of those of us that were still kids and begin the daunting process of dealing with my parent’s estate, such as it was. We were not well off by any means. My mother was a homemaker as were most women at the time. My father was an accountant and made a modest salary that stretched to take care of their combined family of nine children. I thought we were rich because we lived in a big house on a hill. It never occurred to me that it was because there were eleven people in my family or that the house was situated two lots away from a train station.

It seemed that the plan was to spend the summer I was to turn nine years old in the house whilst prepping it for sale then divide the minor children between two of my adult sisters who were both just beginning their own married lives. My brother and I were to go live with my oldest sister’s family and my 16 and 19 year old sisters were to go live with my 24 year old sister and her husband. I thought this was a really crappy plan. I began to hate God’s guts. If I had the opportunity to beat the crap out of him at that point in time, I would have given it a shot. I couldn’t believe that he had the gall to take my parents from me and now I was going to lose my home too. It was just mean. We were raised Catholic and went to church every week and on holy days. I was a good kid overall. I was lead to believe that God was a merciful God. Yet, I wasn’t really getting that vibe. I was getting the God completely sucks and lets really horrible things happen to me vibe. I didn’t understand why we couldn’t just stay where we were. I didn’t understand why we had to be split up. I didn’t like it one bit.

I relished the last summer in my home. I’d sleep late then head to the swim club as soon as I possibly could after waking. It was my last summer at the swim club and I wanted it to last forever. I had also begun to privately wonder if my father had really died. I never got to see him after he was swept off to the hospital that night except maybe wave to him through the hospital room window while we craned our necks to see him from outside the building. I reasoned that maybe it was just too much for him to take care of all of us by himself any longer and he just went away. I used to search the faces of the men at the swim club looking for him. I knew for sure that my mother was dead because my father had told me so and he wouldn’t lie to me about a thing like that, but my uncle had delivered the news about my father. Maybe he was in on the rouse. I never told this to anyone for fear they would think I was nuts, but I entertained the possibility for a long while.

As is bound to happen, the long summer days grew shorter and we were to be sent on a trip while my oldest sister wrapped up the packing of the old house. I loved that house and I didn’t want to leave it. I didn’t want to be separated from my sisters. I didn’t want to go live with my oldest sister and her family. There were twenty years between us and she had moved out and away when I was barely a year old. I hardly knew her. I had only “met” her a few times at holidays and on her infrequent visits home. I felt like I was moving into a stranger’s house and I lobbied hard to not have to go with her, but I lobbied for naught. My fate was decided without me and there was nothing I could do about it. I felt powerless and sad and just plain screwed.

Death Can F You Up - Part II

Over the course of the next year, I slowly became resigned to how my life had changed. I missed my mother terribly and cried myself to sleep many nights. I grew closer to my father and attached myself to his side. I was always Daddy’s girl, but now even more so. I would lean on his shoulder while we watched TV every night after dinner. I became closer to him and got to know him better than I ever had before. I always loved him but now I knew why. Despite his own sorrow, he rose to fill the void that my mother’s death had left in me. He let me abandon my own bed to sleep in his. Perhaps we both found it comforting to not be alone at night.

Of course, I also had the love and support of my sisters and brother to draw on. They became a little more tolerant of their annoying baby sister and we all seemed to grow closer from the ordeal we had been through. I spent the days after school playing with my best friend and slowly became comfortable with my new reality. Once summer came, we wasted our long summer days at the swim club which was our second summer home several blocks away from our real house. The warm days eventually waned and it was back to school once again.

I remember the first day of third grade. My dad had packed my lunch in the requisite brown paper bag with my name written in black magic marker across the front. As our teacher walked us through the rules of third grade, she suggested that everyone have their mother write their name on their lunch bag or lunch box and held mine up as an example. I remember raising my hand and explaining that it was my father that had written my name on my lunch bag. I was trying to send a message in my eight year old way, but I could tell from the teacher’s reaction that she hadn’t caught on. She gave me that dismissive “oh you’re just splitting hairs” look and continued with her schpiel. After class that day I went up to her and explained that I when I mentioned that my father had written my name on my lunch, I did so for a reason. I told her that my mother had passed away the year before and I didn’t like having to correct people when they mentioned my mother. She completely got it and was so lovely and understanding to me for the rest of the year. When she would pass me walking to school while driving in her Chevrolet Bel Air, she would pull over and pick me up. She was kind and wonderful and made me feel like I had a true ally in her.

The school year went along as most of them do and before long spring was threatening to turn to summer. It was mid-May and the air smelled sweet. I remember that my Dad, who was a four pack a day smoker, began cutting back drastically on his habit. I didn’t think much of it, since I pestered him about it constantly. I thought perhaps I was finally getting through to him. He was now only smoking a few cigarettes a day. I was proud of him. One particular Saturday, after taking one of my sister’s for a check-up at the doctor, he came home not feeling well and decided to lay down for a bit. I remember he got up and joined us all for dinner, but went to lay down again afterward, still not feeling himself.

Shortly thereafter he came downstairs and was complaining of really not feeling well. I remember one of my sisters asking if he wanted her to call an ambulance. He refused. About a half hour later, she offered again and this time he said it might not be a bad idea. I remember the ambulance attendants coming into the house and them strapping him to the gurney. I remember that as they carted him out to the ambulance he was cracking jokes about how he wanted to go to the hospital in style, with lights flashing and sirens blazing. No quiet ride in a station wagon for him.

He was in the hospital for a few days and my brother and I went back to our routine of hanging out in hospital waiting rooms while the older kids went to visit him. We had been through this routine when my mother was sick, so it was all strangely familiar. It seems he had suffered a mild heart attack, but would pull through and be released in a couple of days. I missed him desperately and just wanted him back home where I could see him and hug him. The night before he was to be released, my brother and I were at our post in the hospital waiting room when my uncle came down and asked if we’d like to go for a ride. I declined, but my brother who is five years older overruled me and said “no, let’s go with him.” I didn’t want to, but I discerned that my brother knew something that I did not and so we went.

We drove in the car for awhile and eventually arrived at my uncle’s house. My Aunt warmly greeted us at the door and suggested that we might want to go up to our cousin’s bedroom and play with whatever toys were still there. Their kids were all grown. I remember playing with my brother for awhile, when my uncle interrupted us and asked if we would please come downstairs. We went into the sunroom which is where they spent most of their time. He motioned for us to sit in the chairs that my Aunt and Uncle normally occupied. He paced back and forth a couple of times before stopping with his hands clasped facing us. He looked at us and said “You may have been expecting this, but your father passed away.” WHAT? My head swam. I was NOT expecting that under any circumstances. I remember my first thought was “Who will take care of me?” before quickly deciding that I would take care of myself. And then I cried. I cried without any prompting from anyone. I remember my brother hugging me with tears in his eyes and telling me it would be okay. I didn’t see how. I was suddenly the most alone little girl in the whole entire world. I felt hoodwinked and devastated. He was supposed to come home tomorrow. How could this have happened?

I remember clinging to my brother. I remember my aunt and uncle offering to let us stay at their house for the night and protesting vehemently. I just wanted to go home. I don’t remember the ride to our house, but I remember arriving home to the rest of the family buzzing about the house trying to make sense of it all. I remember going up to my brother’s room and finding him with his head buried in the pillow. I remember leaning over him and tapping him on the shoulder as I sat on the edge of his bed. He swung around and cracked me square in the nose with his head. I saw stars and began to wail. It hurt. A lot. I remember one or several of my sisters coming to see what happened and assessing whether my nose was broken. I remember not wanting to go back to the hospital. Instead, they got me an ice pack and sat me on the couch downstairs. I remember that was the first time I ever saw Saturday Night Live and that it was the episode with Chevy Chase doing word association as President Ford with Buck Henry as the therapist.

I remember the funereal vibe around the house again. I remember the wakes, which I again, was not allowed to attend, and I remember the funeral party at my aunt and uncle’s house. I remember everyone looking at me with pain in their eyes as though it was too much to look at this little girl and think about how fate had dealt her such a horrendous blow. I remember feeling alone and totally screwed by the hands of fate. I don’t remember how long we stayed out of school this time and I don’t remember my first day back. I remember my teacher being so kind and supportive, but never piteous. I remember wondering how this would all play out. I remember that it sucked and I didn’t know what was going to happen to us all.